Fox's sleeper hit series "Raising Hope" returns Tuesday night, and creator Greg Garcia ("My Name is Earl") and star Lucas Neff, who plays single father Jimmy on the show, recently told reporters what they thought made the show such a success.

"We got blessed with such a great cast. The combination of that and the writers we have here—it has been a lot of fun to watch the stuff that we’re doing," Garcia said. "I think one of the key things is the writers also don’t have to really push, push, push. You know that with this cast, they’re going to sell the small stuff and get laughs off of it. So far, I think the combination of humor and heart has people watching. Hopefully, that continues to grow."

So how did he come up with this premise? "I didn’t want the mom to be around because my fear is that I would write the mom to be perhaps a little more knowledgeable with babies," he said. "I really wanted the character of Jimmy to have as little help as possible. In thinking about that, I thought about the ways to not have the mom around and this is what I came up with."

"You certainly came up with a good one, the best way to not have a mom around," Neff added. "You should execute her."

Jimmy's daughter, Hope (originally named Princess Beyonce) is actually played by two babies on set. "Certainly, everybody in the crew and cast really adores these two little girls. We look out for them. They’re a lot of fun to work with."

As for what we can expect later on this season, Garcia teased, "Even though [Jimmy] has this crush on Sabrina, it looks like it’s [going to be] a little bit of a long haul for him. So, we actually are not going to just have him sitting around. We’re going to have him dip his toe into the dating world a little bit and see what we get out of that."

As far as what it's like on a set that includes Cloris Leachman and Martha Plimpton, Garcia said it's of course as fun as you'd imagine.

"We do have a great time. Everybody here, the cast, the crew, the writers—it’s a big family," said Garcia. "Everybody has a whole lot of fun. Behind the scenes, Lucas is sleeping with Cloris Leachman, but that's..."

Neff interrupted, "That’s just for sleep purposes. She’s like an electric blanket. She’s very comforting and her core temperature is so high, it’s astounding."

Other than that, Garcia said, "We’re just a normal show of just laidback, fun people that just come to work and do a good job and then we leave. There’s no fun Charlie Sheen antics going on around here unfortunately. We need that. We need one guy who’s going to go off on a 36-hour bender and get us all a couple months off. That would be sweet. "